Ambassador Ole Thonke Danish Ambassador to Kenya during KUSI Ideas Festivals. PHOTO | SILA KIPLAGAT | NMG
The focus on innovation this past week culminating in Jamhuri Day celebrations could not have been more timely.
In the latest global rankings, Kenya is placed at position 88 out of a total of 132 countries.
An earlier report assessed Kenya as being the number two African country in terms of the maturity of the start-up ecosystem.
These statistics demonstrate both the work ahead for the country and the reality that we are a key player in the innovation space.
A critical area of focus must be the ecosystem to help identify, promote and sustain innovations.
The Science and Technology and Innovation Act provides for the establishment of incubation hubs and incubation parks to provide space and support for the nurturing of ideas.
Last year Senate passed the Startup Bill to provide a legislative framework to encourage the growth and proliferation of innovations in the country.
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The Bill seeks to ensure that innovations are not only encouraged but incentives put in place to support them through the initial process and link them up with the private sector for upscaling.
The media occasionally reports on some innovative ideas from a young Kenyan entrepreneur across the country.
For every one of such cases, there are many others that may not get the opportunity to thrive largely due to a lack of information and a supportive ecosystem.
Consequently, the passage of the Startup Bill and reinvigoration of the agencies that exist in the innovation space are critical.
Their success must be gauged on the extent to which they help the country expand the number of innovations and their contribution to the economy.
It is also important that the scouting for and facilitation of innovations recognise that technology is an enabler of and not equivalent to innovations.
Innovation is about ideas that help solve societal problems in a new and more effective and efficient manner.
It thus encompasses all facets of life and all disciplines. All Kenyans have the potential of being innovators in their different spaces.
Inculcating a culture of innovation requires that we also relook our education system and structures.
The focus on universities for partnership in the innovation ecosystem while useful is not sufficient.
It is time to get back to the science congresses that used to be held in the past, encourage the establishment of innovation clubs from the primary school level and infuse an entrepreneurial and innovation culture along the entire education chain.
As part of reinvigorating their programming, it is necessary that the media design programmes on innovation.
It would be nice to have a weekly television programme by our media houses discussing innovation.
This would be a platform to identify talent, discuss bottlenecks and their possible solutions and rally the nation to support innovative ideas and projects.
Kenya is celebrated for several innovations across the world. Its human resource and youth are by and large very innovative.
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It is time though that we turned these into the source of our economic progress. The initial signals by the government to prioritise these sectors are welcome.
The writer is a law professor at the University of Nairobi's School of Law.
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